GOP Co-Opting Antitrust Message To Detriment Of Democrats

For most of the past year, I have been harping on Democrats to make stronger antitrust enforcement a signature issue. Tell me what other single policy can lead to increasing jobs, raising wages, lowering inequality, minimizing the barriers to enter markets, and reducing the political power of monopolistic corporations. Elizabeth Warren has been on this issue for years as has Bernie, and even Hillary Clinton managed to include it in the Democratic platform. But Democrats never really made it a primary issue.

Finally, Democrats made it one of the three central planks in the “Better Deal” plan that was released to mixed reviews a couple of months ago. But, already, it may be that the economic nationalist branch of the Republican party is co-opting that message, especially when it comes to confronting the big tech monopolies that it considers as left leaning, globalist, and inclined to restrict conservative speech.

Buzzfeed has an article showing just how much the current opposition to big tech stretches across party lines. Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders both believe the big tech companies need to be regulated like public utilities. Bill Kristol tweeted that “Considering limits on and breakup of Big Tech could be a useful joint New Center/liberal/neo-libertarian project”. Even the horrible remnant of the DLC, No Labels has joined in the chorus to regulate the big four in the tech industry – Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

In addition, each of these companies has been making major missteps of late. Google’s apparent demand to remove Barry Lynn from the New America Foundation outraged liberals and free speech Republicans as well. Amazon now owns the Washington Post and is therefore in conservative and Trump crosshairs. Facebook’s belated admission to being a supposedly unwitting accessory in Russian hacking of the 2016 election has not helped its cause either. Read the whole Buzzfeed article to get a sense of just how quickly things have turned against these tech giants.

While it’s helpful to have a bipartisan consensus on taking these monopolies down, in the end GOP support for regulating the tech industry will detract from the broader antitrust effort that is really required. Huge swaths of the American economy – banking, airlines, health insurance, drug stores, beef and chicken products, cable TV, and, as we have just seen, credit reporting agencies – are controlled by less than five companies. The Republican party has a real interest in protecting those oligarchies as they are critical donors. Silicon Valley and the tech industry, on the other hand, clearly leans Democratic.

By not really getting out front with this issue and letting Republicans co-opt the antitrust message, Democrats will have missed an opportunity to address the problem of undue concentration across a broad range of American industries while at the same time potentially reducing the political power of one of the few segments of the business world that supports them. That does not mean these companies should not be regulated. They just shouldn’t be the only ones.